Battles

Sunday 6/9/24

It's always better just to be something than to seek attention as something.

Wrote another story. That's three new ones in just a few days. Need to work on them along with six or seven others in the "do right now" category.

I'm going to write a novel based on the song "King Kong Kitchie Ki-Me-O," aka, "Froggy Went A-Courtin'."

The second volume of ghost stories unlike any other ghost stories will be called How to Scare a Ghost: People Stories.

Writers who are all bad at writing spend far more time trying to promote what they've written than they do writing or writing something new. I have no chance right now because an industry is set against one person. I will have a chance. Even if it has to be entirely of my own making. And when that chance comes, everything will start for real, and there will be a great wave that has no end or so much as a single dip. So I keep creating. I'm adding elevation to what will be the wave when the dam gives. Because one day, the amount of pressure and build-up will be whatever that quantity of pressure needed to be to reduce the dam to chips of rock that get carried off in the advancing deluge.

I pick my battles. All of these people who stand against me, and all of these pretend writers who envy and fear me, are not going to help the cause, spread the word, award. So I don't grind on trying to get seven people to buy something. I'm not after seven people. I'm after millions. 500 people doesn't do me any good, 50,000 does't do me any good. Not with what I do and with where I'm trying to get. My work isn't for those numbers. Let's say 500 people went out and purchased everything you did. That's the same as no money. That's going to be basically no revenue. So what is the point? Low numbers, low dollars.

I'll tell you what the point is for other writers, though, and why they operate this way. Their work has no value. It's bad. No one could like it. The 500 people--which is more like eleven--is the endgame. The work doesn't have legs. It's not for the world and it's not meant to be out in it. So then it's ego. It's eleven insincere people saying "Brava! Can't wait to read!" on Facebook. These writers know they can't be more because their work is not anything. They don't address the latter. They don't try to make that work something. They'll think and say, "It's the nature of being a writer!" like there is no way--it's this automatic given--that you could create something with your writing that a lot of people would love.

That's bullshit. That's a lie and an excuse. It's a shifting of blame. If authors were writing the likes of "Fitty" and "Big Bob and Little Bob" then everyone would be reading. Not actually everyone, but a lot of people, and it would be a thing. Not a niche thing, not a "Oh, she's a nerd, she actually reads" thing. And doing the promo thing is also the perfect excuse not to have to write. Writers hate writing. They're not actually writers. This entry in this journal that is not my actual work, will contain more words than just about any writer will write this week. This month. This year, for many of them. It's like some twisted miracle that they were able to write the thing they're promoting, and the idea of executing the miracle again eats them up, haunts them, boosts their anxiety, so they hide. That's what it is. What is the point in getting fifty people to buy your work because of things that have nothing to do with your work? Did you write it only for fifty people? The truth is, none of these writers write anything for anyone. They don't care about readers and offering anything to readers; they only care about readers insofar as their ego and insecurity goes. Getting those insincere comments.

Ran 5000 stairs at City Hall yesterday, did 100 push-ups. I've been emphasizing technique with push-ups. Going slowly, even methodically, and the full top to bottom range of the exercise. At City Hall a man asked me how many times I did the stairs and I told him fifty today. I wonder at what number does this become impressive to them. Not ten. Perhaps twenty? I'm curious as to what would make someone think, "That's it?" It's hard to know what's what without an experiential frame of reference.

The other day in the Monument there was a father saying stupid, incorrect things to his family. That is usually how it works. People just say stuff. They have no clue. No one objects or corrects them, because they have no clue. No one has a clue about anything. Aren't humans great? People will start saying the most asinine things about the Revolutionary War--given the setting--like it's their lifelong topic of research and there's no way 1. They could be wrong or 2. Anyone could be more correct than they.

This father starts saying how firemen in NYC train by running up the stairs of the Empire State Building and as part of being a fireman you have to take an annual test where you run thousands of stairs at once. And the whole family is taking this as truth. Thousands of stairs. At once. Try running fifty stairs in a row sometime and let me know what you think.

This is why people also hate, fear, and envy people who do know: It keeps them from having a voice, because they can't do the free-for-all-of-stupidity routine without being exposed, and they feel bad about themselves because of their shortcomings and comical/embarrassing paucity of knowledge. They feel shamed and slight. This is everywhere: It's with dumb guys like this in their everyday environment, in media, in academia, on social media, and certainly in publishing.

A difference with publishing is that the people in it have this need to think of them as smarter than everyone else--that's part of the deal in their minds, and there's no risk of exposure with how the system is set up and operates--and it's not like anyone has ever thought, or will ever think, that a Bradford Morrow (more about whom apace), say, is anywhere close to being intelligent. Look at these people as they make their appearances in these pages. Remnick, Sigrid Rausing, J. Robert Lennon, Mark Warren (who makes me think of those men who perform fellatio upon themselves, but the anger version of this, as if Mark Warren is someone choking themselves out--gagging and spitting up--upon their own rage), Carolyn Kuebler, Wendy Lesser, Sy Safransky, Speer Morgan, Gerald Maa, Michael Ray. Are you ever like, "Whoa, it's so intimidating how smart that person is"? Of course not. You think, "Goddamn, what a moron." And worse/more.

Downloaded Mosaic's The Complete H.R.S. Sessions, a six-disc set of early Dixieland recordings. Also found a rare tape from the Yardbirds' Little Games sessions and located a recording of a Travis show I attended in 2000.

Mourning dove has been singing for the last twenty minutes here as the sun is starting its ascent in the sky.

The idea of being "proud" of one's sexuality is absurd to me. It's like being proud of one's height. Now, having done something that others would not do, because it was hard and potentially came at a cost, with no guarantees of success, and perhaps or likely without receiving any credit, that took time, strength, decency, and was meant to help someone or some people, is worth being proud of.

But we don't talk about that, do we? The real deal stuff. Because so few people want to do it, and do do it. Maybe that's what being proud should be about. Or else that's just me. The person who only cares about what you do, your character, what you know, what you learn, how you grow, what you do for others, your commitment to the right thing. All of the signage, the posturing, the filters, the slogans, the hooray for our side, means absolutely nothing to me.

Many--most--people don't want anything to be about what's inside of them and what they do and who they are, because in their minds there's nothing real there, they don't do much, they don't offer much, and the focus must be shifted to other things that shouldn't be things because they don't pertain to substance and value.

A level playing field where it's about who a person is and what they can do and what they offer is where it's at.